Interview with Elisha Cuthbert and Producer Joel Silver

What did director Jaume Serra bring to this movie?

JOEL SILVER: Jaume is a young Spanish filmmaker who had done a lot of commercials and music videos. And I like to work in that area with Dark Castle. We really work the scripts out so that we know where we’re going with them. It’s a fairly big entity because there’s a lot of special effects in these movies, so we just want somebody who can go in there and understands that kind of process with the special effects and at the same time, has a fresh take. We meet with a bunch of guys and we look at everybody and we make a decision.

ELISHA CUTHBERT: He has fantastic style. I saw his reel of commercials. He’s worked with Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, a lot of great, fun people, and his commercials are edgy and fast and they’re cut well. The lighting is beautiful and he brought that to the movie. It’s very edgy and it’s stylish. I think that’s what sets it apart from a teen horror film because it’s edgy and it’s fun. It looks good.

JOEL SILVER: It’s really different than you’d think. It isn’t really a teen horror. I mean, it really is good. It’s smart. It’s a smart film and the movie has different styles to it. It opens in almost a “Blair Witch”-kind of reality type story at the beginning. And then you get into the town, and we built this town in Australia. When you’re in the town, the style changes. It’s good. It’s a good movie. It came out really good.

After three seasons on “24” and now this, what’s the secret to playing a cool damsel in distress?

ELISHA CUTHBERT: To keep everything as real as possible. When you get scripts in and you think, “Okay, I’ve never been in this situation before. How can I make this look real?” You just go through all those steps and I go through different ideas in my mind and write them down, and see which works better.

It’s difficult. But as long as I can make an audience feel something, I don’t care whether it’s a good thing or bad thing, just to feel something is important to me. And so if I can convey it as real as possible, that makes the most sense.

What’s the biggest difference between Kim on “24” and Carly in “House of Wax?”

ELISHA CUTHBERT: It’s so funny. When you do television it’s a weird thing because you step into the wardrobe and you have a specific look, and Kim is such a particular person. It’s so easy for me to differentiate the difference between the movies and the television, even though I’m not doing it now. If I were to jump into it that again, it would be like [snaps her fingers] so easy. You’re lucky enough in television to always be at it, to always be doing it. It’s like you’re constantly that person, always, all the time. It gets to be like clockwork. But when you jump into a film, especially when the location’s in Australia, you’re set away from family, you get into a whole new mindset.

There [are] differences. She’s got brown hair, physical, a little bit more tomboyish. Kim was a little bit more girlie in a way, but tough at the same time. Just different ideas. She talks different, too.

JOEL SILVER: Looking at them both, Kim is very reactive I thought. And Carly is very proactive. That’s the biggest thing. Things that happen in “24” happen to her. And in “House of Wax,” she’s driving everything. She’s on her own.

ELISHA CUTHBERT: I make the decisions. Exactly. That’s great.

Will you return to “24?”

ELISHA CUTHBERT: It’s up in the air right now. I mean, they’ve inquired about some stuff. I’ve got to see. I’ve got to read some things, but we’ll see. You never know. You can’t ever put anything aside. You’ve got to leave it open, or at least that’s what I’m doing.

Is this “House of Wax” an homage to the 1953 film in any way besides the title?

JOEL SILVER: Maybe just in concept and idea. We took it further. In this story there is kind of a wax museum called the House of Wax, which is literally made of wax. So the entire building is wax.

ELISHA CUTHBERT: And it was, literally. It was very easy to melt.

JOEL SILVER: When we do that, we were conscious of the original movie. We watched it and there are some kind of shots that will kind of have a memory of that movie. But it’s a very different story and the effects are from right now, from today.

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